Denatured spirit.



STATES PATENT on on.

" 'JEANNO'T w. KENEV'EL, or PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, AssIGNon 'ro ms'ro manvrac'rumne COMPANY, 012 WILMINGTON, nnmwnnn, A CORPORATION or DELAWARE.

DENATURED SPIRIT.

Specification of Letters Patent.

' Patented Mar. 21, 1916.

ll'o nrawing. Original application filed May 17, 1911, Serial No. 627,712. Divided and this application filed. Kovember 20, 1911.

To all whom at may concern:

Be it known that}, JEANNOT W. l innnvnn, .a citizen of the United States of America, residing in the city and county of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, have inve'nted a certain new and useful Improvement in Denatured Spirit, of whiclttlre following is a true and exact description, refer- ,ence being had to the accompanying drawings, which form a part thereof;

The object of my resent invention is a noveldenatured spirit of a character and possessing properties hereinafter set forth, and which can be readily and economically manufactured, and in the manufacture of which various relatively inexpensive or waste materials can be utilized-as hereinafter explained.

. The denatured spirit herein claimed is a homogenous liquid product formed mainly;

(hydrated oxid of ethyl) and equally valuable withethyl alcohol for most purposes in the arts for which ethyl alcohol is or may be employed, is not, and cannot by any practical method be readily converted into a potable spirit, or one suitable fdr medicinal purposes,

Broadly speaking, the process which I employ in producing the denatured spirit claimed herein involves the destructive distillation of such carbonaceous organic materials as flesh, bones, coal, lignite, peat, wood, and other cellular vegetable materials, such as corn-stalks, weeds and .grain straw, which, when so distilled, yield vapors composed of hydrocarbons, either free or mixed with nitrogenous compounds and condensing at temperatures the neighborhood of that at which ethyl alcohol condenses. The temperature at which this destructive distillation is carried out will depend upon the material subjected to the distillation, but in general, it should be carried outat such temperatures and under such conditions as to produce a proportionately large yield of the desirable denaturant constituents, which are those which condense at temperatures at or about the rectification temperature of high proof ethyl alcohol, and are soluble in Serial 'No. 661,229.

the denatured spirit ultimately produced, and in practice this means those solublein ethyl alcohol.

In addition to the destructive distillation. of carbonaceous organic-material the .formation of my denatured spirit involvesallio the generation of the 'alcoholic'vapors from fermented materials: the'mixture of these vapors with the vapors obtained .by thefldestructive distillation step,'.or at least all con; gituents thereof which are soluble l the enatured spirit produced, and condensefat temperatures at or {bout the rectification tempe ie of big proof ethyl alcohoh'. and as a final step the rectification of the mixture,'-

' While the steps referred toare all jeseen- '70 tial to my preferredprocess of forming the denatured spirit claimed herein, they need not be carried'out as separa'te'and distinct steps, and, in practioe,-I prefer to condense all of the vapors from. thedestructive die .tillation of the organic material which con dense at temperatures-of-about 200 F ahr.

or below, prior to any-mixture with ethyl alcohol and their pass the condensate-"or preferably a portion only of it as explained in the 0 owing paragraph, into a suitable distillin and rectifying apparatus into which it e ethyl alcohol is introduced as vapors or as unrectified high wines, in which ethyl alcohol va ors are from fermented materia s.

In practice, I prefer to separate frorn'the. condensed vapors produced by destructive distillation and passed -to the distilling and-1e,

the heavy ta'frr'ygel rectifying apparatus, liquids condensin readily at or above 210 to 220 Fahrenheit, and also the substances, which are gaseous at ordinary atmospheric temperatures. More 'or less valuable byproducts may be obtained from the liquids, 5 and to some extent also from thegaseous materials thus separated out and the, ga sec-18R I materials have a fuel value.

Except for the partial purification 'referred to, I consider it not only unnecessary, 1.00

but, in general, undesirable to otherwise refine or purify the products .of the destructive distillation prior to their admixture with ethyl alcohol'va rs and the rectification of themixture, or most, if not all of the numerous different constituents of the generated 86 residue including some present in relatively minute quantities add, or add to some noxious property of the ultimate denatured spirit produced.

By mixing the condensate from the destructive distillation with the fermented material in the preferred manner specified I avoid the formation of vapors at any stage 'of the operation which can be condensed as tends also, I believe, to make the product more difficult to free from its denaturants. For ordinary practical purposes I consider wood and materials of a .woody nature to be the most suitable substances to be destructively distilled for the production of denaturants in accordance with the present invention. The wood oiI brought over during the destructive distillation of wood materially increases the calorific value of the final product.

When the organic material subjected to the destructive distillation in the process described is wood, or of a woody nature, a main constituent of the denaturant is'methyl alcphol, but the vapors resulting'from this distillation and eventually combined or dissolved in the denatured spirit, ordinarily and advantageously comprise also methyl acetate, furfurol, the mixture of phenols, known as creosote and other bodies of tarry and empyreumatic odor; formic aldehyde, acetone, and appreciable though minute quantities of formic acid, proprionic acid, butyric acid, valerianic acid, acetate of ammonia, n'iethylamin and allyl alcohol, and to obtain these substances in relatively large amounts it. is desirable that the destructive distillation of wood or woody materials should be carried on at a temperature ranging from about 300 to 530 Fahrenheit, and it should be explained at this pointthat, when the wood or woody materials subjectedto the destructive distillation is of a resinous character, it is advisable to first treat'thewood to free 3 in a large measure from turpentine and the terpenes, partly be-' cause of the value of these byproducts and vpartly also because turpentine and the ter- *penesdo not form suitable denaturants.

In the practical production of my improved spirit I have found that excellent results may be obtained' by employing the spent liquor fromhe simultaneous rectification of the ethyl alcoho and denaturant vapors in cooking or otherwise reparing the vegetable material fermented, furnish the ethyl alcohol vapors. The use ofthe spent liquor for this purpose I believe to be advantageous because the use of the liquor materially hastens the fermentation} and also because the noxious materials thus admixed to the mash in effect poisons the latter and not only makes it impossible to generate pure undenatured ethyl alcohol from the mash, but results I believe in the utilization in the ultimate product of some of the noxious and hence desirable substances contained in-the spent liquor.

It is one of the merits of my denatured spirit that because'of the character of the Preferred forms of apparatus and methods for producing the denatured spirit claimed herein are disclosed in detail and claimed in my prior application Serial No,

627,712, filed May 17, 1911, of which this application is a division.

My improved denatured spirit claimed herein contains noxious and poisonous constituents which effectively prevent its use as a potable spirit or for medicinal purposes, and it may be readily distinguished from undenatured spirit both by chemical analy sis and without such analysis on account of its repugnant pyroligneous odor and the irritating effect of the fumes given off when open to the atmosphere. Except-as noted,

however, the denatured spirit can be used for practically all purposes for which undenatured ethyl spirit is suitable and with equally good results. In particular the new spirit has practically the same solvent properties and the same fu'el value as ethyl alco-' hol. It possesses in common with etliyl al o cohol the desirable characteristic for a safe liquid fuel that when flaming the flames may be extinguished by throwing water'on them. A veryimportantpractical advantage of the new spirit arises from the fact that its production may be carried out at a I comparatively low cost since the denaturant constituents may be obtained by the destruc tive distillation of carbonaceous material of low cost, and indeed, as already pointed out, by the use of various farm refuse, and. furthermore, the production may be carried out in'a simple manner and by the use of simple apparatus, and so that inspection by excise agents is practically unnecessary, or

at the very least, so that such inspection is reduced to a minimum.

Having now described my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Let- I ters Patent is,

A denatured spirit condensed from a vapor body consisting of vapor distilled from fermented vegetable matter and products vaporized in-th'e destructive .distillation of wood, said products being unrefined except 10 by the elimination of constituents boiling at temperatures substantially different from that at which ethyl alcohol boils.

JEANNOT W. KENEVEL.

\Vitnesses ARNOLD KATZ,

v S. STEWART. 

